Our whole family vacation at Cedar Point, 2010

When our oldest daughter Taylor approached El Ex and me with the idea for an all-kids episode of “Co-Parenting Matters”, we thought it was a genius idea (not that we’re biased on anything). She said, “Co-parenting is for the kids, so kids should talk about it, right?”

Right! So our kids are taking over the next episode of “Co-Parenting Matters”! Join our daughters, Taylor (13) and Peyton (8), and my stepdaughter Lauren (almost 13) as they answer kids’ questions about co-parenting, give shout-outs to co-parents from their kids, and offer some Kid-Approved New Year’s Resolutions for Co-Parents.

Does your kid have a co-parenting question or want to give a shout-out? Send them our way: info@coparenting101.org, or post a comment below.

We hope you and your kids will tune in for a very special show at a very special kid-friendly time, 6 PM EST, Sunday December 18th!

Last night, after a Thanksgiving brunch that left FedBooHusband and me feeling like we could never eat again, we got a call from some friends, a couple FBH has known for years.  They invited us to come over and “Come hungry!”  The idea of any more food made us weak, but we enjoy hanging out with this couple, so we went.  I am especially thankful for their invitations because even though they were friends with FBH and his ex-wife, they have always been warm and welcoming toward me.

After catching up with K, the woman half of the couple, on her pregnancy (she’s due next month), the conversation turned to someone we both know who has been spiraling down over the last few years.  “What happened to her?” K asked, somewhat rhetorically.  While there are many issues at play, this person’s divorce seems to have been the beginning of the downward spiral in which  she’s made a series of ill-advised choices, including another problematic marriage, and her children are suffering.  K, who has never been divorced, asked me what made the difference for me, how was I able to pick myself up after divorce.  I told her that while I’d certainly had my less-than-stellar, “What the hell was I thinking?” moments in the fallout, two things I can say for sure: I never put my children in jeopardy or neglected them, and eventually, I bounced back.

But “bouncing back” makes it sound like it was easy.  It wasn’t. But I’m fairly certain my behavior didn’t have people wondering, “What happened to her?”  The difference, I believe, is being honest about the divorce.  Divorce hurt.  It was embarrassing.  And because my kids were impacted, it was frightening. I worried what divorce would mean for them.  This fear and my commitment as a mother propelled me forward: I wanted to do everything I could to help my kids not only survive but thrive despite that fact that our family, as we had known it, was no longer in tact.  My devotion to my kids created a wall of protection, around all of us.  My stupid mistakes post-separation/divorce didn’t ruin us because while I didn’t always make the best decisions for myself, my kids were spared the consequences of my stumbles.

“I was honest,” I told K.  “Even when the truth didn’t paint me in the best light, I was honest about my pain, my mistakes, and my fears, with a small group of people I trusted.  I didn’t walk around pretending like the divorce matter or didn’t hurt.”  If I didn’t acknowledge the hurt, I could never have moved past it. I refused to flail around or posture at my kids’ expense.  I didn’t broadcast my troubles to the world, but neither did I feel the need to lie about my well-being to people who cared about me. So I had to be honest and ask for the help I needed–from friends, family, and kindly therapists.  I wish I could say that I was motivated to do this for myself but truly, at my lowest points, my kids were my primary motivation.

“The other thing,” I said to K, “was that I didn’t need marriage in order to feel worthy.”  I am remarried, but I had also been open to the possibility of never marrying again.  I didn’t need marriage to make me feel whole or respectable. Divorce was embarrassing to me for a time, but not shameful.  Shame lingers and keeps healing from happening. The shame of divorce or feeling of loneliness can push people into rebound or reckless dating–or worse, rebound marriage.  In the case of Ms. “What happened to her?”, her rush into a rebound marriage has brought with it many problems and obligations, compounding already rough post-divorce circumstances,.  I’ve always believed that there are far worse things in life than being alone.  Loneliness drove me to some “What the hell was I thinking?” dating situations that served to confirm this belief, ultimately.  These situations also helped me to clarify my values and priorities.  They were mistakes that I learned from.

In the end, K and I couldn’t say with certainty “what happened to her.”  We can only make some guesses from the outside looking in.  But the conversation led me to look inward.  I was reminded of a conversation I had recently with Talibah Mbonisi, my sister-friend, and “Co-Parenting Matters” co-host.  We were talking about parenting and how it’s not our job as parents to spare our children all of life’s bumps, bruises, and disappointments.  It’s our job to model for them that it’s possible to navigate the inevitable responsibly, with grace and maturity.

So if my children or anyone else looks at me and wonders “What happened to her?”, I want them to see that life happened, divorce happened…and I picked myself up and kept going.  I want them to see that I pulled on my Big Girl Panties and set my life’s Plan B into motion.  I want them to see that despite our break-up, I honor my children’s relationships with their dad.  I want them to see that  instead of throwing pity parties, I move forward and try to handle stress and change and disappointment like a grown-up.  This is what I want to my children to see: that divorce was not the end of me.

From Publisher’s Lunch

Deesha Philyaw and Michael Thomas’s CO-PARENTING 101: Advice from a Formerly Married Couple on Parenting Across Two Households, the first book co-authored by a divorced couple for whom co-parenting is central to their daily lives, providing expert advice, practical tips, and tried-and-true tactics developed from real life co-parenting experiences, to Melissa Kirk at New Harbinger, for publication in 2013, by Danielle Chiotti at Upstart Crow Literary(World).

First up…

Tonight at 9 EST, I’ll have the pleasure of joining two awesome gents, WiseMath and Inkognegro, on their show The Black Odd Couple to discuss my webinar, Write Your Damned Book Proposal Already!

And…

The March issue of StepMom Magazine goes live today, and in it, I talk about long-distance love, marriage, and stepparenting. Subscribe today and check it out! You’ll also get a gem of an article from Friend of CoParenting101 Tara Eisenhard on patience, creativity, and commitment to her modern family. Enjoy!

1. I’m blessed that he is committed to putting our kids and their needs first, above our differences.  MiniMe asked him to help her study for a test this weekend, which is my weekend.  He emailed to ask if he could come over on Saturday. Without hesitation, I said yes.  I’m thankful that we (and our respective new spouses) have always been welcomed in each other’s homes,  without tension or conflict that impacts our kids.  I’m thankful that we get along well enough that we can be flexible with our parenting time schedule, as our children’s needs dictate…and sometimes just to accommodate the other person.

2. I’m blessed to be co-parenting with a mature person of integrity.  I appreciate that he is honest and responsible, someone who doesn’t require a court order to get him to do what’s right.  Some of the most frustrating co-parenting situations are those in which one parent is an unrepentant liar or deadbeat or petty.  I might lose my mind if I had to co-parent with someone like that, someone I couldn’t trust to do right by my kids and respect my relationship with my kids.  Peace to the moms and dads who do, and who manage to keep their cool (and their sanity) and to be the bigger co-parent for their children’s sake, in the face of this childish and negligent behavior from the other parent.

3. I appreciate that he’s not only a great co-parent, but a great parent in general.  He knows that contributing sperm or signing adoption papers don’t make him “Daddy”; he knows that his love and care for the girls make him “Daddy.”  He’s an excellent role model for our daughters, attentive, and loving.  I don’t have to worry about what the girls are  learning or being exposed to when in his care; it’s all good stuff. And having grown up without such a dad in my own life, I really appreciate his character and that he’s a man of his word. Our girls have never known the disappointment that I grew up with, wondering if I’d be lied to and let down–again–by someone who I should have been able to count on.  In the wake of our divorce, I often reminded myself that while I hadn’t chosen a “forever” mate in him, I couldn’t have chosen a better dad for my kids.

4. I appreciate his transparency.  Again, my heart goes out to co-parents whose exes have secrets, secret lives, and “situations” that put their children in harm’s way or otherwise contribute to their delinquency as parents.  I don’t profess to know all of his business–nor do I want or need to–but I know that our girls are his priority and his “situation” is kosher and safe. Again, I couldn’t sleep if I had to worry about protecting my kids from their father or trying to do damage control because he’s a negative influence.

5. I appreciate that when we do bump heads, we can work it out.  We remember that we are on the same team, not trying to compete with one another or make the other parent look bad.  We know that if only one of us “wins”, our kids lose. There are no “sides.”  We’re both on the same side: our children’s. At the core, we know that we both want what’s best from the girls, and we always strive to come back to that truth.

6. I appreciate how he has welcomed TechBooHusband into the girls’ lives.  If he was lukewarm about it, he never let on to the girls.  All they’ve ever known is that Daddy thinks their stepdad is a good guy, and that frees them up to build their own relationships with him.  They never have to worry about loyalty or upsetting a parent because they enjoy the other parent or stepparent.

I could go on and on.  I think one of the reasons I felt compelled to write this out today is that I’m on co-parenting nonsense overload.  Day in and day out, less-than-congenial co-parenting situations are on my radar.  They make me thankful for my own co-parenting partnership which, while not perfect, is blessedly drama-free.

If you’re a stepmom or if you love a stepmom, do check out  January ssue of Stepmom Magazine.  The good folks there are celebrating their 2nd anniversary, and like all issues, it’s a can’t-miss! I recently submitted an article to Stepmom about my experiences as a stepmom in a long-distance marriage.  Lately, I’ve been writing more and in different contexts about being a stepmom.  This is my newest tribe.

I’m so thankful for my tribes. My girlfriends, my crew, my lovelies.  I have several, and sometimes, they overlap.  My mama-writer tribe, my adoptive-mama-tribe, my artist-sister tribe, two Martini Moms tribes (one set for each of my daughters’ grades at school), my Twitter tribe, and my newest one…the stepmama tribe, a group of women who “get it” because they too are living it.  Whether “it” is struggles with stepkids, husbands, BMs (biomoms or babymamas, depending on the circumstances, also known as ex-wives, ex-girlfriends, ex-whatevers).   Stepmoms need spaces to vent, commiserate, share wisdom, and support each other.   We need publications like Stepmom mag, and we need public and private forums where our diverse experiences are validated.

I know of several stepmoms who have gone “underground” and are blogging anonymously (or not at all) because their husbands’ exes stalked their original blogs, left harassing comments, and/or angled to use the blog content as a weapon in court. Cyber-courage has folks acting a fool, for real.  Then there are the exes who stalk their children’s stepmoms’ blog daily, lurking, and never leave a comment, looking, hoping, for only God knows what. (Note: Thanks to analytics, no one is ever truly anonymous on these Interwebs. Ever.) Perhaps the article in the current issue of Stepmom, “Why the EX seems CRAZY and What YOU Need to Do” can shed some light.

So hat’s off to Stepmom mag and every outlet that celebrates and supports stepmoms, out loud.

You can read it here.

“2010 Co-Parenting Resolutions” from my column at The Faster Times: These are still fresh for ’11!